Pandemic pushed area libraries to offer new things to check out

Apr. 27—More than a dozen people were quietly practicing yoga in Santa Fe's downtown library one recent morning. Miles away at the same time, a guitar ensemble was jamming at the south side branch.

Sure, at both place there were patrons checking out books, reading magazines and using computers to access the internet. But the "live" programs in Santa Fe Public Library's system — offerings that once would have been unusual if not unthinkable — are just one more way to stay relevant in an ever-changing world.

Music and yoga are just the start: local libraries also offer a mobile food bank and retro movie nights for families — 2001's Monsters, Inc. was on the menu this month. If that's not enough, there's an arts and crafts program offered by the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum staff.

The transition from being a one-stop book lender to a multi-faceted community center for reading, streaming, exercise and movie-watching is becoming more common around the country. Libraries are not just growing up, but growing programs — and audiences.

Credit the coronavirus pandemic, said Margaret M. Neill, library division director for the Santa Fe Public Library system.

"In some ways the pandemic has restarted the popularity of libraries," she said. "It's reminded people we are a resource they can access, and we're not asking them to pay us anything. We demand nothing. We're just here."

In fact, despite a pre-pandemic study that showed there had been a drop of 31% in library usage in the country between 2010-18, Neill said the Santa Fe Public Library system is attracting more people than it did before the coronavirus became a reality.

It's one of several reasons the library is planning to update its 2019 long-term plan for its three branches, she said. That blueprint to improve library services, meet client needs and revive programming needs to be altered "because COVID changed the landscape," she said.

Neill, who has been running the library system for about two years, is working on providing an update to the plan by the end of the summer.

She said the pandemic's "tentacles" have had a "long-lasting impact in many areas in terms of budget, library use and recovery. There's so many issues that are indirect results of COVID that we have to work with — and budget is one of them."

The library system's budget for the 2024 fiscal year is nearly $6 million she said, and she expects it to stay flat this coming year. But that doesn't mean staff members can't come up with inventive ways to offer offbeat programming.

That's why children's librarian Kate Cornwell, who is licensed to teach yoga, started the yoga program at the Main Library.

It's also why La Farge Branch Library librarian Lydia O'Reilly, who is passionate about the environment and planting and recycling, put together an array of programs that includes a plant exchange initiative where kids get a starter plant to care for.

Literacy efforts like Wags and Words, in which children develop confidence by reading aloud to therapy dogs in the libraries, and reading clubs where adults can discuss their favorite books, also are growing in popularity.

Neill said her library system, like others around the country, conducts surveys of patrons to see how best to serve them.

"We listened to the community to figure out what they wanted," she said. "A lot of it was experimentation. We landed on this mix — yoga is one of them, we have a chess club for kids ... children storytelling, a teen lounge hangout."

"We've added a lot," Neill said.

An uphill climb

Still, libraries do face challenges, including budgeting limitations, efforts to ban books and one less day of keeping the doors open: Santa Fe libraries no longer open Sundays. Having staff members run the additional programs sometimes means fewer people at the circulation or reference desks.

Those difficulties are balanced by key help from the nonprofit Friends of the Santa Fe Public Library, founded in 1974, which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year.

In the initial years after its founding, Friends contributed about $7,000 a year to the library. That number has grown to more than $200,000 a year, raised through membership fees, book sales and donations.

The Friends group is planning a public presentation celebrating its 50th birthday May 4, when Jonna Ward, CEO of the Seattle Public Library Foundation, will talk about how public libraries are evolving and the challenges they face.

Acting board Chairman Newby Herrod said in an interview Friends works to "provide additional funding for programming" at the library for both children and adults.

Though membership in the group dropped to around 300 during the pandemic years, it's up to around 500 now, he said, adding he hopes the group can continue to attract recruits who want to help the local library system thrive.

Struggles in the America's library systems are significant. New York City also shut down its libraries on Sundays in 2023, citing budgetary reasons, said Emily Drabinski, president of the Chicago-based nonprofit American Library Association.

While the association's most recent annual report, "The State of America's Libraries," played up the way public libraries are adapting to support their communities, it also pointed to disturbing statistics regarding efforts to ban books in public libraries.

The report said efforts to censor library books "have resulted in the removal or restriction of untold numbers of diverse books in school and public libraries."

The association's Office for Intellectual Freedom recorded efforts to censor 4,240 book titles in the country's public libraries in 2023, a 65% increase over the previous year.

According to the association, New Mexico is one of the states where few such challenges exist, with just two attempts at restricting access to certain books occurring last year.

One such effort in Rio Rancho to force the City Council to ban some books was unsuccessful.

Neill said in her 20-plus years as a librarian in Texas, New Mexico and other locales, she could not think of one formal push to ban books.

"People will sometimes email to say 'this book is offensive,' but they don't take the next step," she said.

Small town, big library

Many rural communities, like Aztec in northwestern New Mexico, are finding ways to keep their constituents connected, Drabinski said.

In Aztec, she said, the library has set up a virtual system so patrons can take part in telehealth conferences and appear in magistrate civil court cases.

"That can be a lifesaver," Drabinski said.

Angela Watkins, librarian for the Aztec Public Library, echoed Neill's view the pandemic changed everything for public libraries — and not necessarily for the worse.

"Ever since COVID we've had to morph in so many different ways and become a little bit of everything to the community," she said. "We've become a surrogate family."

Finding partners makes a difference, she added. The library recently ran a program with the support of the University of Colorado on the impact of drought on the region. That program included a temporary traveling interactive wall exhibition called "We Are Water" to inform people of the water challenges facing the area.

A librarian for more than 20 years, Watkins said "never in her wildest dreams" would she have imagined public libraries would one day offer such diverse services.

"It paints the picture that public libraries are here to help, we care," she said. "From dealing with early literacy efforts to helping those who just want to escape all the day-to-day doldrums we have in life, you want that quiet place to go to and feel welcome. Your public library is that place."

Neill, who still has her first library card framed and visible in her office, said people who may have once taken the facilities for granted realized during the pandemic they were "interwoven into the fabric of their lives when it was gone."

The library has become "a community center," she said.

Recalling her childhood days in El Paso, when she would hang out in a library and pull random books off the shelves, she said the beauty of any library is "you can walk in and be slightly overwhelmed by all the possibilities and different things you can learn."

That's one thing that hasn't changed about libraries over the years, she added — they are always "learning centers."